Urban geography

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New York City, one of the largest urban areas in the world

Urban geography is the study of urban areas. That is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors. They often have a high population density.

Urban geography is that branch of science, which deals the study of urban areas,in terms of concentration,infrastructure,economy and environmental impacts.

It can be considered a part of the larger field of human geography. However, it can often overlap with other fields such as anthropology and urban sociology. Urban geographers seek to understand how factors interact over space, what function they serve and their interrelationships. Urban geographers also look at the development of settlements. Therefore, it involves planning city expansion and improvements. Urban geography, then, attempts to account for the human and environmental impacts of the change. Urban geography focuses on the city in the context of space throughout countries and continents.

Urban geography forms the theoretical basis for a number of professions including urban planning, site selection, real estate development, crime pattern analysis and logistical analysis.

Areas of Study

There are essentially two approaches to urban geography. The study of problems relating to the spatial distribution of cities themselves and the complex patterns of movement, flows and linkages that bind them in space. Studies in this category are concerned with the city system. Secondly there is the study of patterns of distribution and interaction within cities, essentially the study of their inner structure. Studies in this category are concerned with the city as a system. A succinct way to define urban geography that recognizes the link between these two approaches within the subject is then, that "urban geography is the study of cities as systems within a system of cities."^{[cite this quote]}

Site and situation

Site describes the location of a city with respect to its soil, water supply and relief, or more still the actual point on which a settlement is built while situation describes the surrounds of the city in terms of other settlements, rivers, mountains and communication. Locations for cities are usually chosen for good reasons. Benefits of certain locations can include:

• A wet area: water is a constant necessity for urban areas and is difficult to transport. For this reason many cities are located near or adjacent to rivers.
• A dry area: in wet areas a dry area offers protection from flooding and marshland.
• Easy access to building materials: stone, wood or clay are necessary for the construction of cities and are difficult to transport long distances.
• A strategic defensive position: historically many cities have been constructed on high ground in order to make attack more difficult and to give a good view of surrounding land (for example, Quebec City). River meanders are also used as partial moats. Some cities were also built in swampy areas for the same reason (for example, Paris).
• fuel supply: most cities were initially constructed near wood for burning and cooking. Today many cities are constructed near coal, oil and gas mines to make use of those resources (for example: Newcastle, Glasgow, Pittsburgh, Essen).
• A food supply: cities need some nearby land to be suitable for animal grazing or crop growing
• A travel intersection point and bridging points: it is often useful for a city to be located at the intersection of rivers, roads or train lines in order to facilitate travel and trade. Bridging points are shallow areas that allow easy construction of bridges, (for example: London, Cologne).
• Historically many cities grew at so-called "break-of-bulk" points along navigable rivers, where a local obstacle such as rapids required trade goods to be trans-shipped from larger boats to smaller boats, for example: Chicago, Montreal.
• Shelter and aspect: it is desirable to construct cities located on the side of a slope that is protected from incoming winds, and in a direction that receives maximum sun exposure.

Cities as Centers of Manufacturing and Services

Cities differ in their economic makeup, their social and demographic characteristics and the roles they play within the city system. These differences can be traced back to regional variations in the local resources on which growth was based during the early development of the urban pattern and in part the subsequent shifts in the competitive advantage of regions brought about by changing locational forces affecting regional specialization within the framework of the market economy. Recognition of different city types necessitates their classification, and it is to this important aspect of urban geography that we now turn. Emphasis is on functional town classification and the basic underlying dimensions of the city system.

The purpose of classifying cities is twofold. On the one hand, it is undertaken in order to search reality for hypotheses. In this context, the recognition of different types of cities on the basis of, for example, their functional specialization may enable the identification of spatial regularities in the distribution and structure of urban functions and the formulation of hypotheses about the resulting patterns. On the other hand, classification is undertaken to structure reality in order to test specific hypotheses that have already been formulated. For example, to test the hypotheses that cities with a diversified economy grow at a faster rate then those with a more specialized economic base, cities must first be classified so that diversified and specialized cities can be differentiated.

The simplest way to classify cities is to identify the distinctive role they play in the city system. There are three distinct roles. 1. Central places functioning primarily as service centers for local hinterlands. 2. Transportation cities performing break-of-bulk and allied functions for larger regions. 3. Specialized-function cities are dominated by one activity such as mining, manufacturing or recreation and serving national and international markets. The composition of a cities labor force has traditionally been regarded as the best indicator of functional specialization, and different city types have been most frequently identified from the analysis of employment profiles. Specialization in a given activity is said to exist when employment in it exceeds some critical level.

The relationship between the city system and the development of manufacturing has become very apparent. The rapid growth and spread of cities within the heartland-hinterland framework after 1870 was conditioned to a large extent by industrial developments and that the decentralization of population within the urban system in recent years is related in large part to the movement of employment in manufacturing away from the traditional industrial centers. Manufacturing is found in nearly all cities, but its importance is measured by the proportion of total earnings received by the inhabitants of an urban area. When 25 percent or more of the total earnings in an urban region are derived from manufacturing, that urban areas is arbitrarily designated as a manufacturing center.

The location of manufacturing is affected by myriad economic and non-economic factors, such as the nature of the material inputs, the factors of production, the market and transportation costs. Other important influences include agglomeration and external economies, public policy and personal preferences. Although it is difficult to evaluate precisely the effect of the market on the location of manufacturing activities, two considerations are involved: the nature of and demand for the product and transportation costs.

See also

• Chicago School (sociology)
• Gentrification
• Infrastructure
• Municipal or urban engineering
• Rural sociology
• Urban agriculture
• Urban
• Urban ecology
• Urban field
• Urban sociology
• Urban studies

References

• Urban Geography (ISSN 0272-3638) at Bellwether Publishing

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Urban geography

• A Dynamic Map of the World Cities' Growth
• Social and Spatial Inequalities

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